Month: November 2015

In todays studio session we discussed different types of lighting and then worked on recreating David Bailey’s style –

“David Bailey’s distinctive 1960’s portraits have a timeless feel and should be on everyone’s list of styles to recreate. His use of lighting and bold composition made him one of the world’s best known portrait photographers” 100 Ways To Take Better Portrait Photographs (Book)

We used a white backdrop, snoot on the backdrop then one light to the side of the model to create a very harsh shadow down one side of the face. This created a very powerful masculinity to the image.

I was the model for most of this session but i was also able to get a few shots of Roy afterwards so i could get an example of this lighting technique.

I have a website that i had made a few years ago, it has some of the weddings i have done on there plus some portraits & other occasions but i was never shown how to use it properly so it is very dated, has none of my recent work and i would love to improve it! So i am planning to make this a project of mine and with what i learn on this course i would love to be able to make it look and function how i would like it to.

I have been doing photo shoots & weddings for a few years now but never more than one in a day so i wanted to give myself a challenge and see if i could work fast creatively with different types of clients throughout the day.

I used photo of my son and added some snow and bokeh in photoshop to give it a festive feel then put this on facebook to advertise for 20 minute Christmas Mini Shoots, All to be held on sunday 29th at my home.

For my studio set up i knew i had to keep it simple because i was having a mixture of ages from a baby to adult so i used my white backdrop and 3 300w strobe lights – two to light the backdrop fully and one next to where i would be taking the photographs. The plan was to take the photographs and then add the snow & bokeh in post. I also set up another area for the baby photographs.

The day went so well, and it was so fast having people arriving / greeting them and then getting them straight into the studio but it worked somehow. Everyone arrived ready because they knew they only had 20 minutes and each session seemed to flow much better than my 1-2 hour sessions.

Documentary Film – Finding Vivian Maier

“Finding Vivian Maier is the critically acclaimed documentary about a mysterious nanny, who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that were hidden in storage lockers and, discovered decades later, is now among the 20th century’s greatest photographers” http://www.findingvivianmaier.com

Vivian Maier was an incredible street photographer that went undiscovered until she passed away and her negatives were stumbled across by John Maloof in an auction house. After realising the extent of who he had uncovered he dedicated himself to reconstructing her archive of work and getting it into the public eye. Now, with roughly 90% of her archive reconstructed, Vivian’s work is part of a renaissance in interest in the art of Street Photography.

This was a documentary about her life that they have pieced together through her photographs, videos, voice recordings and people whom she worked for. Working as a Nanny and describing herself as a spy, changing her name and moving from place to place because of her obsession with privacy and newspaper hoarding she was one fascinating artist! She documented the life that surrounded her capturing the grit, the differences in class and race and the love and humour.

This book was mainly pictures and demonstrated the influence different shapes have on how you perceive an image and how they can change your perception of an image when you change their size/colour and shape.

Our group is doing a documentary on the Regent Street building so i researched information on the regulations for doing renovation work on listed buildings because we want to include some facts about the upkeep and maintenance of the building. See the link below:

Today Colin wanted us to experiment with motion blur using suspended balloons, a fan and ambient lighting. For this we used a mix of tripod and hand held with a very slow shutter speed around 1-2 seconds F14 ISO 100 to show the movement of the balloons.

We took some photos of the balloons on their own with the white backdrop then added a scarf and then some coloured gels for some variations.

Then the balloon was sprayed with water and we used the macro to get some close up shots of the water droplets.

I was involved in the filming of and i fully edited The Deal, The Handover, The Wishing and Scream & Shout. I LOVE the post production side the most and really enjoy putting it all together.

Oceans Eye is an animatic i created from the storyboard and scriptment of the 3 minute film i wrote. This was the first time i have ever done one of these and as basic as it is it made me realise how much work is involved in anything animated.

The Minority Report Re-Cut was again something i had never done before and took a lot longer than i anticipated, mainly down to choosing a film to begin with but i thoroughly enjoyed doing it.

This was so much fun to film, from trying to perfect Andy’s wheel spin as he drives off to making the incriminating documents with a mug shot of the villain (myself), climbing over the side of the multi storey building, the attack on Tasha, the chase -using the gopro from Tasha’s view as she chased me worked really well, the chase through doors and down stairs as fast as we could, the comedy scene with Richard in the elevator and getting the end scene look convincing where i get knocked out by a door….it was all so much fun!

There is some scenes that we would re-film if we had more time

When Andy gets out of his car on top of the car park he is smiling which he shouldn’t be because he is supposed to be annoyed.

My climb over the wall could of been more ‘graceful’ (note to myself….must spend more time practising climbing walls ha)

We could of done with another angle of my face when i am approaching Tasha at the car.

A more convincing fall on the stairs

A better angle of when i get knocked out by the door

Also i missed some letterbox effects on some frames when editing

But overall we were very pleased with what we achieved and definitely learnt by our mistakes

Starts very basic, black screen with a moving white line, just a voice talking.

white line changes with intesity on words that appear to be of importance.

It cuts to a series of images showing war and destruction then evolution, it moves through everything very fast and uses lots of drawings

Then back to the war we create, very desturbing images through history

Jordan Maxwell, talks about religion

George Carlin – makes fun of religion / God….. all down to money

Part 1: Explains the sun & its importance, the zodiac.

Discusses different countries versions of Jesus Son Of God – All created at different times through history with almost the same information all copied from Egyptian era 3000 BC from inscriptions on walls. They are talking about the sun, light vs dark and good vs evil.

It uses lots of factual information throughout the film and is clear the point it is making that there is no truth in the bible, it is plagarised egyptain information which has been warped to control the world for dominance and power.

No special effects were used in this film, it was so simple – voice recordings, historical images/videos and some animation but because of the content and facts it was interesting straight from the beginning which proved to me that in documentaries the most important thing is to grab the viewer with the content straight away rather than imagery.